Sean McCann knows what’s up. Beyond making some of the straight-up best and most genre-busting contemporary music out there (e.g. last year’s Music for Private Ensemble was TMT’s 13th favorite thing of 2013), he also runs one of the coolest and most fancily titled labels in existence: Recital. In addition to his own music, Recital has in the past put out music by Idea Fire Company and Troy Schafer. On June 3, Recital will yet again release music by another artist who I am 99.9% sure is not Sean McCann. This time it’s the New Zealand-born American composer Annea Lockwood, who is perhaps best known for her Glass Concerts, in which she made use of the sonic and physical characteristics of glass, as well as her Piano Transplants, which involved setting fire to or burying pianos because, let’s be honest, pianos are assholes.
Entitled Ground of Being, this new release gathers four pieces from between 1996 and 2013. Three are sound pieces, collecting recordings from a variety of sources, and one, “Ear-Walking Woman,” is a composition for prepared piano performed by Lois Svard. You can hear “Buoyant” from the album below. Ground of Being will be available both in CD and digital formats, with the CD pressing being limited to 500 copies. Pre-order here.
Also, be sure to keep at least one of your eyes peeled and pointed in the direction of the Recital website, because later this summer the label plans to release Ian William Craig’s A Turn of Breath. If the quality of Craig’s 2013 release, A Forgetting Place, is any indication, it’s seriously going to be worth peeling your eyes about, which now that I think of it, sounds pretty gross and painful (like grapes???), but still totally worth it. A Forgetting Place is that good.
Ground of Being tracklisting:
01. Buoyant
02. Dusk
03. Ear-Walking Woman
04. Ground of Being
• Annea Lockwood: http://www.annealockwood.com
• Recital: http://www.recitalprogram.com
[Photo: Xenia Pestova]
More about: Annea Lockwood, Sean McCann
